In case anyone’s been wondering, I totally know exactly what “decolonize” means and how to use it in a sentence. I know some doubts have been raised on this subject, and I would like to take a moment to step away from my hard-hitting journalistic endeavors to respond to those aspersions.

You know what, actually? I don’t have to defend myself. Not to you,reader, and not to my urban studies professor. So, suck it. Q.E.D. End of testimony.

Will any of you here today be satisfied with that answer? No. Not one of you. Some of you will say, “How can gourds be decolonized?” and “This isn’t really related to urban studies, do you know what urban studies is?” but I stand by my senior thesis. This is important. This is groundbreaking. This is a perspective that has been squashed for too long by the cyst-sexist, white capitalist patriarchal agenda.

Also, I know exactly what the term cyst-sexist means. You don’t need to tell me about cyst-sexism, that’s how aware I am aware of the struggle of those who deal with the sexism against cysts. It’s tearing our society to shreds, so you can quit telling me how I’m just throwing words around and I don’t understand the systems of expression behind them.

I think we’re all asking the wrong questions here. Actually, that’s not what I mean, I think all of you are asking the wrong questions here. You are all asking questions like “How does this meet the requirement for graduation?” when what you really need to do is turn the spotlight on yourselves because clearly you are not ready to handle the magnitude of my research. The insights, the groundbreaking-ness of what I’ve written here– it’s all lost on you. This is what is called a “paradigm shift,” and I am shifting your paradigm wide open. All of you are too afraid to admit that you don’t understand what I’m talking about because it is too profound. I am breaking walls down now that you will just start breaking down 10 years from now, Kanye West 2014—and yes, that is how you cite a source, see?! I KNOW HOW TO CITE SOURCES. I worked hard on this paper, and I am not about to spend another year researching and writing about a subject that I just don’t care about to satisfy some “department” at some “college” that isn’t ready to examine everything they ever thought was true and change their minds and realize that I am right, that the decolonization of gourds shall undoubtedly prove integral to the development of the socioeconomic urban landscape. Have I reached 10,000 words yet? Almost? Okay, five , four, three, two, one. Great, that’s 10,000. I can stop writing now.

Clearly, I have put in a tremendous amount of effort, research and careful academic thinking, shaped and molded by the tremendous work of professors who are nothing at all like Professor Charles of the Urban Studies Department and don’t fail their students right before graduation because they “don’t think the student has a deep understanding of his argument, and that the student is just using the longest, most ostentatious words in an unnecessarily verbose manner to hide the fact that he has no hypotheses based on observations from research and refuses to challenge his own understanding of the world around him.”

I absolutely, irrefutably, know all the definitions of the words I use in my thesis, and I use them all correctly, and I am good at semicolons; Professor Charles, and anyone else listening to my appeal. I tolerate no analysis of any unnecessary, yet sufficient, editing or reformations to be compounded upon my magnum Operah. Should a single scratch of red correcting pen endear itself to the latest evisceration of my senior thesis, I will write a strongly worded letter demanding the exorcism of Professor Charles, as well as the cesarean section of any colleagues rallying in his support, especially his intern, Sarah. Did Martin Luther King Jr. let the Catholic Church walk all over him when he impaled his 95 feces to the White Castle door? No. And neither will I. I will crusade, and be found righteous, for in my knowledge there is Truth and there is enlightenment to be shared.

So, I think I can definitively say to all those gathered here at my appeal that Professor Charles, and the rest of academia, are the ones who use big words that they don’t understand to sound smart. Not me. I know exactly what “decolonize” means, and I will be collecting my diploma at graduation alongside all of my pears. Thank you.

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